I think the thing that makes Inscryption work so well is that cards have always been mystical; used as superstitious epitithets for the ancient world around us. Harnessing that savage nature for a deckbuilder roguelike is game design harmony - but even on top of that, I think this is a very well paced and built out card game. The Bad RNG doesnt ruin hours and hours of a run because everything is snappy and plays out briskly. I wish there was way more.

Conversely, ███ █ and ███ █ dont seem to be as good because it reverts the occultish, mystical charm of the cards by turning it back into a regular old trading card game. You go from playing with Tarot to playing with Yugioh. (or like, Digimon. Something worse.)

Front Mission seemed kind of daunting at first to me, as I’ve never really played anything like it with the customizable mechs. What really intrigued me about playing Front Mission was the talent of Amano and Shimomura behind it. There’s digitized portraits of Amano’s character designs in-game, and his timeless art is the kind of stuff I’ll never get sick of looking at. It started to make more sense as I played it, and honestly, it wasn't as confusing as I had thought.

Front Mission is a strategy RPG where you customize mecha for your units to use in battle. When changing the equipment for your mechs though, they didn’t take the easy route with spritework. There are different battle sprites, field sprites, and giant sprites in the setup menu that all change depending on the pieces of equipment you pick. There’s a ton of equipment too, with there being body armor, legs, guns, and even backpacks too, so to see this much work put into something like this is astounding. It really helps sell the game's whole gimmick of building mechs and really makes some builds feel unique. Might I add that you can even paint the mechs different colors for free? This actually helped a ton because I usually have a hard time differentiating troops in these games, so I knew who was who with the allocated colors.

Much of the time will be spent sitting in the menu and customizing your mechs. Admittedly, buying parts is slow, but it’s fun thinking about which builds to go for. There’s a weight limit for mechs, so you kind of need to balance out your builds and not have too much stuff on them as you mix and match a variety of parts from shops, which all raise certain stats. Another aspect of the builds is your character stats. There’s some sort of hidden leveling system for weapon proficiency, so you’ll usually want to stick to one type of weapon for each character. You have the “Fight” stat, which is for gauntlets; the “Short” stat for 1 tile range weaponry; and “Long” for missiles and other long range guns. Certain equipment will work better for short-range or long-range people, so that’s why there’s a lot to think about in the parts shop.

The combat revolves around this body part system, where each mech has separate health bars for their leg parts, both individual hands and the body. Destroying the legs will lower their tile movement; destroying either hand will make whatever weapon the mech is equipped with unusable; and destroying their body will immobilize them completely. You also can’t control what parts you shoot unless someone has a skill that lets them, so it kind of makes a lot of battles very RNG-reliant. I also really like the combat animations. It’s pretty satisfying seeing your mech fire off a multi-hit machine gun as the game lags with the debris flying everywhere…

Front Mission has some awkward balancing as well. The start of the game provides you with some pretty unremarkable equipment, and leveling up units is tricky since they don’t do very much damage. This made the game very hard at the beginning, and I was getting my ass kicked at a certain skill check. At around a third through the game, the characters start to get stronger, unlock their skills, and eventually become some of the most broken units in RPG history (probably). This means you don’t even have to be strategizing anymore. There is benefit at the start of the game from having a balanced team, but in the latter half, the short-range units are so busted that it doesn’t even matter if you have any other differently classed units. Hell, I’m sure you could solo most maps with just one of them!

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Front Mission. The story is very ahead of its time and probably my favorite aspect of the game, which is rare for me since I’m more of a gameplay-oriented person. It’s a pretty easy game and not that hard to get into, despite how complicated it may seem. If all still goes south, there’s an arena you can grind at in case you get stuck too.

HOLD THE FORT. You mean to tell me that Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Masahiro Sakurai collaborated on a falling block puzzle game in 2006 and I'm just now finding out about it??

In short, this game rules. Sakurai brings the Melee orchestral soundfont, quirky game menus, charming art direction and scenario, and simple twist on a beloved genre that completely reinvents its gameplay. Mizuguchi brings the snappy gamefeel, reactive sound design, and overall dopamine-inducing game design. Together, they've made an addicting little time waster that's perfect as a pre-bedtime ritual.

Notably, this game is designed in such a way that I can't imagine it working on anything but the DS due to the touchscreen. Maybe a modern smartphone or even Switch port is possible, but Meteos is one of those classic victims of innovation left in the dust by the modern games industry.